On the Wide, Blue Sea and Mulberry Fields

"The sea and mulberry fields" is short for "What was the sea is now mulberry fields", meaning the evanescence of worldly affairs. As an expression, it has been in use for more than a thousand years. It originates in a book of fairy tales made up by Ge Hong (284-363) of the Jin Dynasty (265-420).

Ge Hong was a famous Taoist very much fond of the ways of immortals. His works include "Baopuzi" and "The Immortals". There is a dialog in `The Story of Wang Yuan' and one in `The Story of Ma-gu' in "The Immortals" that are largely identical but slightly different. In the dialog, Ma-gu said to Wang Yuan, "Since I followed you I have three times seen the Eastern Sea become a land of mulberry trees. Shortly before I went to Penglai and found the water about half shallower than before. Can it be that the sages all said that dust would soon rise in the sea again.

Ma-gu and Wang Yuan were both immortals much publicized by Ge Hong. But among the Chinese, probably few people know Wang Yuan whereas Ma-gu enjoys great popularity. All people want to live a long life. In the past, the painting `Ma-gu presents a birthday present' used to be a favorite birthday present. It is said that the Eastern Sea changed to mulberry fields only once several thousands years. What a long life Ma-gu must have lived who had seen dust rise in the Eastern Sea three times. Yet, she looked like a girl in her late teens. She would certainly be especially welcome if she came to congratulate someone on his birthday. The concept of "the sea and mulberry fields" was spread far and wide together with the story of Mu-gu.

In 1922, Zhang Hongzhao(H.T.Chang) published an article entitled "On the History of the Geological Sciences in China" in Vol.1 of Bulletin of the Geological Society of China suggesting that the statements that "Dust rise in the sea" and "The Eastern Sea became mulberry fields three times" were first found in "The Altar of Ma-gu in the Southern Part of Fuzhou" written by Yan Zhenqin (Yen Cheng-Ching,709-785) of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). This is because snail and clam shells were found in stones to the northeast of Mount Ma-gu and it was thus inferred that the place was formerly a sea and had become mulberry fields." Zhang was of the opinion that it was the seed of geological thought. Based on the information provided by the "Book of Graphs", Yan Zhenqin immediately inferred that to the northeast of Mount Ma-gu snail and clam shells can still be found in stones in elevated places which may probably have been mulberry fields before. This is doubtless a big stride forward from fairy tales and legends to scientific cognition. Unfortunately, intellectuals with scientific foresight like Yan Zhenqin were not easily found in ancient China. In not a few poems and articles, "the sea and mulberry fields" were quoted after the appearance of "The Immortals. For instance, in "Poems of the Tang Dynasty more than 60 places in poems written by 40-odd poets are associated with "the sea and the mulberry fields". However, over 90 percent of these are but expressions of sad feelings for the passage of time, reflections on ancient events, sighs at the vissicitudes of the ways of the world, lamentations at the swiftness of life and envy of the freedom and leisure of immortals by using the changes from seas to mulberry fields metaphorically. Very often the feeling of being disillusioned with the mortal world was manifest. These poets were by no means trying to explore the changes in nature and were totally unrelated to scientific or geological considerations.

For instance, in his poem "My Travel to Xuanwu Lake via Jiangning", Zhang Jiuling (673-740)thought back to the onetime domineering State Wu at sight of the great changes in the course of time. After the defeat and suicide of Fucai King of State Wu, the flourishing capital Gusu became a haunt of wild beasts. Apparently mediating on the past, Zhang was bewailing the present. Another example is a poem by Li He (790-806) "Leisurely Travel on an Ancient Trail", in which the marine sands changing into rocks is mentioned. Such a description is not to be found in "The Immortals" and tallies with the reality of nature. Unfortunately, what the author endeavored to present to the reader were still the deep feelings for the swiftness of time. Such feelings and emotion were even more clearly expressed in "A Dream of Travel in Heaven", another poem of Li He's, in which one reads the lines "Three heavenly mountains have all become blue sea, A thousand years went by like galloping horses, "which reflects the precariousness of worldly affairs. Immediately following the two lines are "Surveying the country below I see nine tiny wisps of smoke. The vast expanse of sea water is foaming as if in a cup!" Li He was viewing the changes in time and space from a macroscopic point of view, which is somewhat similar to our understanding of the universe. Unfortunately, many people in ancient times, instead of seeking the truth along these lines, lost themselves in purely imaginary meditation.

Few, if any, of the ancient people in the real world ever associated the vicissitudes with the life of immortals and had the interest in writing lines such as "I cannot help laughing at sight of the vast sea changing to dust." Most of them were just expressing their melancholy thoughts at the quickness of time and the short span of life, especially after frustrations and separation with family people in a war.

Nevertheless, there were also poems and essays written by ancient people that either give scientific tincture to the expression sea and mulberry or record facts about the changes of land to sea or sea to land. What should be mentioned are two ploems by Bai Juyi (772-846) to the tune of Lang Tao Sha:

Ⅰ

One sand dune appeared

Only to be replaced by another;

One wave disappeared to make room

For another.

They mix and separate without ever ceasing,

Mountains are leveled and

Seas drained.

Ⅱ

Foaming waves rise everywhere on the sea,

A boundless expanse of sand is all I see.

They go in the morning and came in the evening

And change the Eastern Sea to mulberry fields.

No mysterious color can be found here. Rather, the phenomenon of the waves lashing at and eroding the coast, carrying along sands and leveling up the seabed were all mentioned.

It seems that Bai Juyi's breaking away from the narrow circle of "the immortals" had something to do with his experiences and observations. He was once the governor of Hangzhou and as the sea was then near Hangzhou City, he had the opportunity to see the sands washed by sea waves.

However, the damage done to the coast by the lashing and erosion alone could only produce a small amount of shredded substance far from enough to exert significant influences on the changes in sea or land. It was rather the sedimentation of the sands and mud carried by the rivers that could turn a sea into land. This is not described in Bai Juyi's poems, but Shen Kuo (1029-1093) of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) found on the Taihang Mountain that "strings of shells of snails and pebbles like bird eggs can be seen embedded in rocks on cliffs." He then inferred that "This was once a seashore but is now nearly a thousand li (500 kilometers) to the east of the sea. The continent we see today is formed by mud". He further pointed out that All big rivers such as the Zhang River, the Hutuo River, the Zhuo River and the Sanggan River are all muddy rivers. To the west of the present-day northeast China and Shaanxi water flows no less than 50 meters below the ground; carrying sands and mud eastward every year and forming large tracts of the continental earth. There should be no doubt about this. This is a scientific explanation of the change of sea to mulberry fields not easily found in ancient books though neither the sea nor mulberry is mentioned here.

It can be ascertained that roughly before the introduction of modern geology into China, no one in this country has ever surpassed Shen Kuo in the scientific understanding of seas changing to mulberry fields.

The deposit of sands and silt occurs not only in the part of a river that empties into the sea as described in a poem by Meng Haoran who wrote "Quiet flows the clear river, a sand dune appears when the water level is down," but also it can be found in lakes and the stagnant part of a river. After a sandbar was formed, changes were still going on that would result in expanded deposit and it was possible for certain portions of a sandbar to collapse for the washing of the flowing waters. Such a phenomenon was noticed by some ancient people as can be seen from the vivid description of such a phenomenon by Hu Bin in the late Tang Dynasty in his poem "The Sangluo Sandbar near the Lushan Mountain."

If we do not confine ourselves to the changes seen with our own eyes, but make a comparison of our observation with historical records and the general configuration of the earth's surface, we shall be able to see more changes of seas to mulberry fields. For instance, the present-day Congming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River was a sandbar that appeared in the river as late as the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Later, as it grew higher and larger, fishermen and woodcutters made their home here and fields were opened up and houses built. By the time of the Five Dynasties (907-960), it was made a town and given the name Congming and it developed into the present form only after many more changes Furthermore, changes are still going on. As the river in the northern part of the island flew slowly while that in the southern part of the island was rather turbulent, the northern bank of the island is still expanding into the river whereas the southern bank is receding.

Topographically, China is more elevated in her west regions and low in her east and the difference in altitude of the terrain is quite appreciable. In many of her rivers, the silt content is very high. "In one dan (=1 hectolitre) of water from the Jing River you find several dou (=1 decalitre) of silt." This is a line from a folksong sung as early as the Han Dynasty (206 B. C.-220 A.D.) during the reign of Wudi. For the Yellow River there was then the saying that "One dan of water contains six dou of mud." It seems that this no exaggeration. According to present-day observations, the average sands and mud content of the Jing River over the years has been 161 kilograms per cubic meter of water, the highest record being as many as 984 kilograms. Even though soil erosion was not as serious as that of today because of the rather large areas of forest extant in those days and there was less mud in the rivers, soil erosion has still been serious for the Yellow River valley opened up very early owing to man-made damages. The waters of the Yangtze River are much clearer than those of the Yellow River, but the total sands and mud carried is by no means insignificant. Therefore, in China, especially in the low and flat regions in the eastern part, places that have been inundated for a long period of time in the past were filled up into land. There are numerous examples and those of how the wide, blue seas were turned into mulberry fields were but a small part of such happenings.

In the early period of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), tidewater was still a threat to manyh of the cities and fields in the present-day East China regions. Aline in a poem written by a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations by the name of Li Qi during the Kai Yuan period (713-741) reads :"Tge ev